This week we complete our source to sea canoe adventure. We reflect on the 3,351 mile trip and thank everyone that made the trip possible. We are so grateful to the river angels, schools, students, and sponsors that were part of our adventure.

Grades: 3-10

Supplemental Work:

Write us a letter (email us at ontheriverteam at gmail.com to get our address) telling us your favorite part of our trip and what trip you want to complete one day.

This week on the river, we stop at a confluence very special to my heart: the confluence of the Mississippi River and the White River. Here we learn how Glacier National Park and the Ozark Natural Science Center are connected and what the rivers in between look like.

Grades: 4-8

Supplemental Work:

Plot a few of your favorite places on a map and figure out a route by water to connect them. Is it possible?

This week on the river, we took a break in Cape Girardeau, MO to go out on a boat with Seth and Nick, two fisheries biologists that study paddlefish in the Mississippi River. We had a blast learning about their job.

Grades: 3-10

Supplemental work:

Find and write to a professional in a field you are interested in, to ask them questions about their jobs and how they became what they are.

Make a comic strip showing the steps to studying paddlefish.

Draw a paddlefish, include its rostrum and lip tag. What are other things you should add?

During our trip we have teamed up with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (http://www.adventurescience.org/microplastics) to collect samples of water to be tested for microplastics. This week on the river we learn what microplastics are and how we study them.

Grades: 4-8

Standards:

MS-ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems

Supplemental Work:

Look at the map at www.adventurescience.org/microplastics and see if a sample has been taken near your home. Did it have plastic? What does that mean to you?

Organize a trash pick-up. Share with your community how you helped and why it is important.

This week we take a break from canoeing to hang out with Sara's mom in Kansas City and learn about water footprints. Luckily, Sara's mom, Marjie, is a fresh water fairy and she taught us what water footprints are and how to keep them small.

This week we learn about Sara's FAVORITE animals: herpetafauna. We will learn about the similarities and differences between reptiles and amphibians and about the herpetologists that study them. WARNING: this video contains CUTE animals.

Grades: 3-12

Standards:

3-LS3.B: Variation of Traits

MS-LS4.A: Evidence of Common Ancestry and Diversity

Supplemental Work:

Pick your favorite reptile or amphibian, draw it and label the features that make it a reptile or an amphibian.

Think about all the reasons people are scared of snakes (In Harry Potter the "bad" guys are represented by snakes, in books snakes are always scary, our parents are scared of snakes). Write a first person narrative from the perspective of a snake explaining its behavior and how to best deal with snakes so no one gets hurt.

Write a letter to the On The River crew telling them about your positive experiences with herpetafauna.

This week On The River we explore who eats who and how energy and matter is passed between plants and animals in the food cycle. We'll cover the roles of producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers and decomposers.

Grades: 4-8

Standards:

5 LS2.A: Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems

5 LS2.B: Cycles of Matter and Energy Transfer in Ecosystems

Supplemental Work:

Make a list of everything you eat in a day and use your list to make your own food web.

Write a story from the perspective of one carbon or nitrogen molecule that is cycling through the food cycle..

Play the food web game with your class - stand in a circle, have one student be the sun and assign each one of the remaining students to be a producer, consumer or decomposer. Using a long piece of string have the students connect all of the organisms in the food web using the string (i.e. sun -> cottonwood -> caterpillar -> frog -> mushroom). Once the food web is complete, remove one or more organisms which have been poisoned by pesticides, these students must drop the string. Any of the remaining students who feel the string slacken (i.e. are connect to the dead organisms) must also drop their string. This continues until the entire food web has collapsed demonstrating the far reaching consequences of our actions humans.

This week On The River we explore how dams effect wildlife and humans while we paddle across Lake Sakakawea, a reservoir formed by a dam on the Missouri River. Do you think wildlife or humans benefit more from dams, and what are those benefits?

Grades: 5-8

Standards:

4-ESS3.A: Natural Resources

MS-ESS3.C: Human Impacts on Earth Systems

HS-LS4.D: Biodiversity and Humans

Supplemental Work:

Speak for the wildlife like Ann did. Pick an animal that lives along the river. Research how dams effect your animals and then write a letter to one of your representatives with your animal's perspective.

Make a list of all the pros and cons of dams we didn't cover in our video.

This week On The River travels down the Missouri River on the part most unchanged since the time of Lewis and Clark. Here we explore the similarities and differences between our adventure and the adventure of Lewis and Clark.

Grades: 4-8

Standards:

MO State Standard 3a: Knowledge of continuity and change in the history of Missouri and the United States

B. Knowledge of the ways Missourians have interacted, survived and progressed from the distant past to present times

F.Westward Expansion and settlement in the US

H. Reform movements

Supplemental Work:

Make a map and keep a journal like Lewis and Clark did. Pick two points in or around your school. Have students explore a route while making a map and keeping a journal to document what they found.

Read more about Lewis and Clark, then watch our video again to find even more differences and similarities.

Use a Venn Diagram to chart similarities and differences between the two adventures (or another adventure).

Join the On The River team from Triple Divide Peak in MT, where their trip starts as do three oceans: the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Arctic. Here we will discuss the Continental Divide, watersheds and an introduction to the On The River project and the canoers.

As a class brainstorm what On The River will need to do to be successful, then brainstorm what the class needs to do to be successful.

Have students calculate the distance of the On The River trip from source to sea. If the canoers plan on the trip taking five months, how many miles per day will they need to average to complete the trip on time.

As a class use maps to determine which watershed you live in and which ocean the water goes to.